Here’s a situation: it’s 7 p.m., you just got back from work, stressed and exhausted, waiting to slide into your comfiest pajamas, and instead of a loving, ready-to-cuddle partner you find a bag of unwashed laundry with a note that says “Yours.” Yikes. Mahatma Gandhi or another equally relaxed fellow might take a deep breath and ignore this stinky situation altogether. But for the regular folk, you and us, there are two ways this will end: brush the whole thing off, do your side of the laundry, or retaliate and teach your boo a lesson they sure won’t forget.

Having been put in a similar situation after her husband decided laundry is none of his business if there’re no clothes of his (“They’re YOUR clothes,” argued the culprit), TikTok user ‘mumlifechoseme‘ resolved the little problem in the most entertaining, passive-aggressive fashion — by making a “violent” revenge video that instantly caught on and went stratospherically viral (as of today, it has over 5 million views).

This TikToker mother made a video that quickly went viral after sharing how she handled her husband’s selfish act

Image credits: mumlifechoseme

@mumlifechoseme #AITA #petty #marriedlife #mentalload #brittok ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey

Telling about her eye-opening “this is on you” instance in Time’s article when her own husband couldn’t care less about a bunch of rubbish on their front lawn, Eve Rodsky, the author of ‘Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live)’, wrote the following epiphany: “[I] began to understand acutely why so many women are running against the clock from the moment we wake up.”

Coincidentally, a few months later, Sophie Knight, Amsterdam-based journalist, shared her own story of how her efforts to combat gendered, statistically proven imbalance only resulted in her being paid by the husband to continue doing those same household duties… Are women doomed to surrender to the notion that husbands, however affectionate and reasonable, simply cannot bring themselves to split the chores 50/50?

Learning that wives and mothers still do the bigger bulk of childcare and domestic work — almost twice as much, to be exact — compared to married fathers, it’s hard not to understand why some women are tempted to plot an entertaining revenge plan. That should teach them a lesson, right?

Joshua Klapow, a Ph.D. clinical psychologist and the creator of the program MentalDrive, suggests there are more efficient ways to divide household duties fairly instead of plotting petty revenge plans that can always backfire. “Teaching our partner a lesson is a very paternalistic and disrespectful position to see them from,” he told Bored Panda. Klapow argues that teaching our significant other ‘a lesson’ can be a sign that we don’t want or simply don’t know how to directly communicate with our partner.

Many people related to this situation and shared their support for the author in the comments

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Asked what would be the right approach if the partner continues to downplay your complaints, Klapow suggests avoiding ‘idle threats’. In other words, be direct with what you want. “Selfish behaviors often occur not as intentional malice but as self-absorbed and unaware actions. Until you state specifically what you want and why, how it makes you feel, your partner may just continue as if there is no real problem,” he explained.

Another important sidenote Klapow highlights: no one should avoid confrontation if it’s your partner’s emotional wellbeing that you don’t want to jeopardize. He reasons that feeling bad about what they did to make you upset only signals that they care. “Trying to have difficult conversations with the goal of no one feeling distressed is like avoiding the true content of a difficult conversation.”

Of course, some tend to be more stubborn and self-absorbed than others. Should you throw in the towel if the partner is not willing to make compromises, then? Klapow thinks it’s more complicated than that. “The nature of a relationship is not to compromise on everything,” he said. But what if your partner shows no signs of regret or repeatedly refuses to cooperate in renegotiating the household workload? “That means you have a partner who is more invested in themselves and less invested in the well-being of you or the relationship.”

And while that may not be a deal-breaking ‘red flag’, everyone should know their tolerance limits and what they’re willing to sacrifice for the future of the relationship. Just make sure not to bottle up your disappointments because it “will transition into contempt for your partner and their selfishness.”

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